Our Lady of Guadalupe

According to tradition, on December 9^th, 1531, the virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, a hill northwest of Mexico City. She instructed him to tell the bishop to build a church on the site. Three days later she appeared again and told Juan Diego to take some flowers to the bishop. When he presented them, roses fell out of his cloak, and beneath them was this painted image of the Lady.

Today the cloak is displayed in the Basilica of Guadalupe nearby, one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.
The Virgin of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious and cultural image, with the titles "Queen of Mexico",  "Empress of the Americas", and "Patroness of the Americas"; both Miguel Hidalgo (in the Mexican War of Independence) and Emiliano Zapata (during the Mexican Revolution) carried flags bearing the Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Guadalupe Victoria, the first Mexican president changed his name in honor of the icon.

Cassandra

Cassandra beautiful and elegant, favorite of her parents among the two daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Obidiegwu of Owerri North, her mother being a native of Ankpa in Benue state had fallen in love with her father while they were serving as youth coppers 19yrs ago in Otukpo, Benue state while they served in the Local Government headquarters.
Cassandra so beautiful though only 19 was the cynosure of all eyes and full of life,
Just gained admission into Imo State University Owerri to study sociology, the truth of this story is that Cassandra today lies wasting in Imo State prison instead of Imo State University and it hurts my heart as I write this story.
This story is based on a true life story and Cassandra is still in prison as at the time of this writing but the names in this story are not the actual names of the the people in this story.
Cassandra had suitors who were asking for her hand in marriage, some were pledging to take care of her education while they were married. Yes the idea was good to her owing to the fact that her parents could not actually afford to take care of her education, and so she had to make a choice among the many suitors who came to ask for her hand in marriage because to her, faithfulness to her would be spouse means the world to her.
Andrew, dark and good looking had always charmed my lady with simplicity and kindness trying to make sure she got the best in life, he had eventually visited the parents of Cassandra and informed them of his intention of taking Cassandra to the altar to be his bride.
Preparations were put in place for the traditional marriage between Cassandra and Andrew, in the usually way for women asebi ladies were already putting together clothings for their day of dancing and merriment when the sad news came.
Andrew was shot dead last night, Andrew and Cassandra had gone out last night for dinner and on their way home they stopped a chemist shop to buy paracetamol, and when they had entered into their Mercedes Benz to go home, what happened next was like in a movie.
A dark colored SUV drive by, the driver side rear window down while someone from the inside shot three times through the passenger side of the Mercedes Benz shattering the side glasses, the SUV drove off immediately, Cassandra was safe but Andrew was hit.
Help came and Andrew was rushed to a nearby hospital, he was still alive and conscious for a day and he gave up and joined his ancestors at an early age of 38. Before Andrew died he had stated while still dying in hospital with regards to the incident exonerating Cassandra in any way for what had happened to him.
Mrs. Ngozi Andrew Azubuike came pointing accusations on Cassandra that she had killed her husband. It was then Cassandra knew that Andrew had a wife and two boys, Andrew had kept this from her for the six months they had dated during which he proposed to her.
Using the word shocked or confused I would not actually know how to describe what Cassandra felt like hearing that this man whom had been so wonderful had such a big secret he kept away from her.
Cassandra was arrested by the police and she gave statement of the event of the night before, Andrew’s widow is bitter and is bent on making Cassandra pay for the death of her husband and is laying murder accusation against this young would be university student.
Cassandra was the target of the bullet and not Andrew, his wife Ngozi sent the assassins to prevent his husband from getting married to Cassandra, and she confronted Cassandra personally that since the bullet meant for her (Cassandra) hit her husband, she would have to suffer for it.
As at the time of this writing, Cassandra has been in the prison 2years, fasting and praying that God Almighty will send angels like he did to release Paul and Silas while they were in prison.
The faith of a young woman who dreamt of being a university student but ended up in Owerri prison. Will she be able to go to school again? Maybe someone will come to her rescue, maybe justice should be quicker because I believe that the truth will eventually win when the case is over in court.
Write your comments please.

Our Lady of Zeitoun

Our Lady of Zeitoun, Also known simply as El-Zeitoun, Zeitun or rarely Our Lady of Light, was a mass Marian apparition that occurred in the Zeitoun district of Cairo, Egypt, over a period of 2–3 years beginning on April 2, 1968.


Apparition
The first apparition at Zeitoun was recorded on the evening April 2, 1968 when a Muslim bus mechanic called Farouk Mohammed Atwa, who worked across the street from the church of Saint Demiana in Zeitoun, thought that the apparition was a woman attempting suicide by jumping from the structure. Two other men also noticed a white figure on the top of the church

The sighting was reported to the police. Crowd begun to gather on the event site and the police attempted to disperse it. According to the police, the sighting was just a reflection of the light from the street lamps However, the crowds viewed the sighting as a clear apparition of Saint Mary, and so the attempts by the police to disperse the crowd were unsuccessful. The event itself ended in few minutes.

A week later on April 9 the phenomenon reoccurred for a few minutes and since then apparitions became quite frequent, sometimes repeating two-three times a week . The appearance of the lights continued up to 1971. Many healings and miracles were reported during the time of the apparitions.

The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Pope of Alexandria, Kyrillos VI appointed a committee of high-ranking priests and bishops to investigate the matter, headed by Bishop Gregorios, bishop of postgraduate studies, Coptic culture and scientific research. On May 4 Kyrillos VI issued an official statement confirming the apparitions.

They were also confirmed by the Jesuit Father Dr. Henry Habib Ayrout, and by Rev. Dr. Ibrahim Said of the Protestant Evangelical Ministries. Nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart also witnessed the apparitions and sent a detailed report to the Vatican, resulting in the arrival of an envoy on April 28 who also saw the apparitions and sent a report to Pope Paul VI.

The apparitions were also witnessed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and captured by newspaper photographers and television. Investigations performed by the police could find no explanation for the phenomenon. No device was found within a radius of fifteen miles capable of projecting the image, while the sheer number of photographs from independent sources suggests that no photographic manipulation was involved.

Having been unable to produce an alternative explanation for the luminous sightings, the Egyptian government accepted the apparitions as true.

CATHOLIC HYMN BOOK: Hymn 310

HELP, LORD, THE SOULS


Help, Lord, the souls that thou hast made,
the souls to thee so dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sin committed here.

These holy souls, they suffer on,
Resign’d in heart and will,
Until thy high behest is done,
And justice has its fill.

For daily falls, for pardon’d crime,
They joy to undergo
The shadow of thy Cross sublime,
The remnant of thy woe.

Oh, by their patience of delay.
Their hope amid their pain,
Their sacred Zeal to burn away,
Disfugurement and stain.

Oh, by their fire of love, not less
In keenness than the flame;
Oh, by their very helplessness;
Oh, by thy own great Name.

Good Jesus, help! Sweet Jesus, aid
The souls to thee most dear,
In prison for the debt unpaid
Of sins committed here.

ST. JOSEPH

Coming from the root of king David,
through the line of Abraham who begot Isaac.

King David being a decendant of Isaac begot Solomon
who begot Robom. And Roboam begat Abia. St.Matt.1:12.

And Jacob begot St. Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom
was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

St. Joseph! The husband of Mary whom Jesus calls "Father".
The only created human beign whom with God the Father,

the second person of the Most Holy Trinity
our LORD Jesus Christ calls "Father".


A unique role he played in the generation he lived
and a unique role he still plays in our lives today
as a great mediator and intercessor.


St. Joseph who was espouded to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A man of Love.
A capenter.
A skillful workman.


With devotion he loved her purity.
He kept her purity.

St. Joseph my holy model.
St. Joseph pray for me.

INDULGENCE

It was a Sunday mornig and as usuall Angel, my elder brother’s wife would come to the house with her two lovely children Queen 3years n David 17months and we would all spend the day together.
It has always been the so and we loved to spend the Sunday together so on this particular Sunday Angel was telling my sister and I how she started to read the bible to her little ones before they go to bed and how the little ones loved it that they would be the ones to call their mother to read them the bible before they went to bed.
I encouraged her to continue with that wonderful act believing that some day those children will be the ones to read to their mother especially as they were bright and doing well in school.
Again I told them that Pope Leo XIII granted to the faithful who shall read for at least a quarter of an hour the books of the Sacred Scriptures with the veneration due to the Divine Word and as spiritual reading, an indulgence of 300 days.
Then came the question from my sister “What is an indungence” I explained to her the little I have read and have been taught about indulgence, its meaning and the conditions one can be in other to gain an indulgence, only the much I know I told them.
Again I realized how the average Catholic youth does not know or is ignorant of the treasury possessed by the Church which Jesus has granted to St. Peter so I went further to read about indulgence and what better place could I seek such information than the Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive.
In granting an indulgence, the grantor (pope or bishop) does not offer his personal merits in lieu of what God demands from the sinner. He acts in his official capacity as having jurisdiction in the Church, from whose spiritual treasury he draws the means wherewith payment is to be made. The Church herself is not the absolute owner, but simply the administratrix, of the superabundant merits which that treasury contains. In applying them, she keeps in view both the design of God's mercy and the demands of God's justice. She therefore determines the amount of each concession, as well as the conditions which the penitent must fulfill if he would gain the indulgence.

Various kinds of indulgences
By a plenary indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory. A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the penalty; and this portion is determined in accordance with the penitential discipline of the early Church.

Dispositions necessary to gain an indulgence
The mere fact that the Church proclaims an indulgence does not imply that it can be gained without effort on the part of the faithful. From what has been said above, it is clear that the recipient must be free from the guilt of mortal sin. Furthermore, for plenary indulgences, confession and Communion are usually required, while for partial indulgences, though confession is not obligatory, the formula corde saltem contrito, i.e. "at least with a contrite heart", is the customary prescription.

Authoritative teaching of the Church
The Council of Trent (Sess, XXV, 3-4, Dec., 1563) declared: "Since the power of granting indulgences has been given to the Church by Christ, and since the Church from the earliest times has made use of this Divinely given power, the holy synod teaches and ordains that the use of indulgences, as most salutary to Christians and as approved by the authority of the councils, shall be retained in the Church; and it further pronounces anathema against those who either declare that indulgences are useless or deny that the Church has the power to grant them (Enchridion, 989). It is therefore of faith (de fide)
• that the Church has received from Christ the power to grant indulgences, and
• that the use of indulgences is salutary for the faithful.


To read more on this topic Indulgence please visit http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm

Forgive me Lord

St. Mary of the Cross

Australia got its first Catholic saint Sunday, a feisty 19th-century nun who was briefly excommunicated when her colleagues exposed an abusive priest.

Mary MacKillop co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart in 1867, and gained a reputation as the first Australian nun to leave the cities and minister to the rural poor.

Nuns in her order got evidence that a priest was engaged in "scandalous behavior," according to the Rev. Paul Gardiner, who has spent decades researching MacKillop's life.

The nuns reported it to the Rev. Julian Woods, MacKillop's first spiritual mentor who co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Woods in turn reported the abuse to church authorities, resulting in the Rev. Ambrose Patrick Keating being sent back to Ireland from Kapunda, Australia.

But Keating's friends "were really upset with Father Woods and thought they could best get at him by getting at Mary," said Claire Larkin, the chair of the Mary MacKillop Centre in Penola, Australia.

"They told a lot of lies to the bishop," who excommunicated MacKillop and the entire order in 1871, she said.

Bishop James Quinn revoked the excommunication five months later, on his deathbed, the order says in its biography of Mary MacKillop.

But she still had to spend decades fighting local Catholic leaders for control of the order she founded.

"She was a charismatic entrepreneur," the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Inside the Vatican," told CNN. "She was a feminist before her time. She struggled in a male-dominated institution and got things done."

Her familiarity with church politics may have played a role in the instructions she issued to her nuns when women got the vote in Australia.

"It is the duty on us all to vote ... Get advice from some leading man in whom you have confidence or from the priest, but keep your voting secret," she wrote in 1903.

The order grew to include 300 nuns in Australia and New Zealand by 1891, its website says, and now has about 1,200 members.

She died in 1909 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995.

The Catholic Church credits her with miraculously helping to cure a woman named Kathleen Evans of cancer.

She took to wearing a piece of MacKillop's clothing pinned to her nightgown and asked her family and friends to pray for MacKillop to intervene with God on her behalf.

Her cancer disappeared, Evans said in a statement.

Pope Benedict XVI recognized the cure as a miracle in December 2009, and announced two months later that MacKillop would be canonized.

He praised her "courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer" on Sunday in canonizing her as St. Mary of the Cross MacKillop.

Some 4,000 people attended an outdoor mass Sunday to celebrate the canonization in Penola, where she started her ministry in a disused stable.

"It's so exciting, we've had a marvellous day," Larkin said from Penola.

"It's been a long journey" to sainthood, she said. "Her dream started in a little country outback town, to think that she's gotten that recognition.

If Only Mary Were But Known

It is written everywhere from Genesis through Revelation. “The Morning Star”. The author of the Canticle of Canticles called titled her “My Dove” Sgs 6:8.
The book of revelation gave her the title “Ark of the Covenant” Rev 11:19.
At Pentecost, the powers in the merits of her prayers brought upon mankind the gifts of her beloved Spouse. Like thongs of fire, it stood upon their heads Acts 2:2. At the foot of the cross the sorrows of mankind she carried, there she was proclaimed the Mother of mankind.
“He came down to His own but His own did not Him”.

‘If only Mary were but known’.

Every day, the Holy Spirit tries to set the world to see the beacon of hope for mankind. The Gospel according to St. Luke gave an account of it all. The Virgin after being visited by the angel of the Lord set forth to visit her cousin in a distant land. This part of the story is quite interesting. Luke 2:41 ‘and it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.......43. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

At this time Mary had not told Elizabeth about her encounter with the angel but because Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit so it was revealed to her that the babe in the womb is the Lord.......

46. And Mary said: my soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold from henceforth all generations shall call ne blessed.......
Does my generation call her blessed? That is the big question. I read the Bible daily but do I see and understand these things clearly? Or do I interpret the bible the way I want? Lots of questions to ask but sorry it's not the time for questions.

‘If only Mary were but known’.

There would be peace world over, souls would frequent heaven more freely, poverty would cease in the land of the rising sun and like in the wilderness the chosen people of the Most High would once again eat manna from heaven. If only Mary were but known sinners would frequent the Sacrament of confession, souls would be saved, life anagaga.

MARY IMMACULATE: MEDIATRIX OF ALL GRACES.

By his death on the cross, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ obtained for mankind all that he could ever have done for us. All the merits of the sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ he laid at the feet of Mary. At the foot of the cross St. Jn19:25-27 “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. 26 When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. 27 After that he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her for his own”.

These merits of Jesus purchased for mankind by his death upon the cross, he placed at the feet of Mary and to distribute to man she gives to men as it pleases her, when it pleases her and in what quantity it pleases her says St. Louis Mariae de Montfort as she gives to man even unto those who do not acknowledge her as mother but are followers of Jesus for Jesus saith “if they are not against us they are for us”

Reading the story of St. Catherine Laboure and the Miraculous medal, we find the need to ask for grace at all times from Mary Immaculate, Mediatrix of All graces. Mary as wrote by another author was born Immaculate, she lived immaculate, died immaculate and was assumed body and soul to heaven immaculate. Jesus said that we should ask and we shall receive and so for us to receive grace we shall ask for it. Nothing good comes from man naturally as a result of the fall of satan and so every good we do in life is as a result of the grace of God which we receive through the maternal hands of Mary Immaculate Mediatrix of All graces.

During Our Lady’s visit to the young novitiate St. Catherine, as the story goes, rays of light emanated from the rings on the fingers of the Blessed Virgin Mary though some of the rings brought forth no light. St. Catherine inspired by the Holy Ghost who is ever present with, in and around the Blessed Virgin his beloveth spouse(that is what we mean when we say Mary is full of grace) asked the Blessed Virgin the meaning of the rays of light that emanated from the rings on her finger and Our Lady replied that it signifies graces of God which she gives to men. Again the young lady asked about the rings that emanated no light and Our Lady replied that they meant graces for which we have failed to ask for.

We need the grace of God to firmly have faith in the God whom we believe in. It takes the grace of God to live a life of prayer as a Christian. It takes the grace of God for a sick man to have faith that the God whom he serves, whom he has called upon in prayer for healing from bondage of illness has healed him. It takes the grace of God to do virtually everything just like it takes the grace of God for the writer to write.

In all these, this woman, a mere creature of God but whom it pleased God to abode in her womb for 9months, this woman who nursed the son of God and whom the Son of God was subject to for the first 30 years of his earthly life only to complete his earthly sojourn at 33. Jesus gave to Mary 30 years and 3 years to the world.

In all, this woman who walked along the way to Golgotha with her son and finally at the foot of the cross, all the graces of God obtained by Jesus on the cross of death he gave to her when he said “Mother behold thy son”(Mother of the Church) even as we see in Rev 12:17 And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Mary is the Mediatrix of All graces and we must go to Mary for all our spiritual and temporal needs because to Mary it has been given the grace of intercession and protection. Mary is the sweetest, dearest, nearest, most convinced way to Jesus Christ our Lord and Master.
FrancisMary Obidike